The perfect diet - does it exist?

If you are on a quest to change your body composition or boost your health, you may find yourself overwhelmed by all the different dietary approaches. 

Traditionally, the word "diet" describes how you eat. However, over time it has evolved to mean "restriction" or "elimination" - often in attempt to lose weight. 

To help you out, I want you know that the perfect diet doesn't exist. There is no one "best" diet that works for every person around the world. Every human being is different - different genes, lifestyle habits, nutritional needs, emotions, activity regimes.....and so much more. 

While there are several universal nutrition principles that have consistently shown to improve health, reduce risk for disease, maximize longevity and to help with weight maintenance, I'd like to offer a different way of thinking about food. In other words, if you are on a quest to improve your health or change your body composition, there's much more to the diet formula than searching for the pieces of a perfect diet. 

• Your diet should not only keep you alive, but it should help you thrive. 
  
• Consume the highest-quality (nutrient density) of food that you can afford within your budget. Consider it an investment in your health. 
• Your diet should supply your body with a wide variety of nutrients to support all body processes. 
• Your diet should be financially feasible. 
• Your diet is consistently evolving. Work on a good, better, best system. 
• Prioritize food that comes naturally from the Mother Earth. 
• Your diet should be sustainable, flexible and enjoyable. 
• Your diet should have a positive environmental impact. 
• Eat for your activity level. 
• Your diet should leave you satisfied. 
• Your diet should not be socially isolating. 
• Changing your diet won't fix body image issues. 
• Achieving a specific look, number on the scale or size of clothing from your dietary choices will not ensure long-time happiness. 

Diet rules, lists and labels are used to control your eating. They tell you exactly what you should and shouldn’t eat in order to lose weight, improve health or change body composition. The diet rules make you believe that if you follow the “good” food list and avoid the “off-limit” foods, you will achieve certain results. (This doesn’t apply to medical, ethical and religious reasons for avoiding certain foods or food groups).

Extremes and absolutes are never healthy. Strict and restrictive eating can run and ruin your life, health and emotional well-being. Often times, it can create disordered eating patterns.

If you don’t diet, you can never cheat, break, mess up, feel guilty, fall off the wagon or have a bad day of eating.

Your eating choices belong to you. If you choose to reduce, minimize or avoid certain foods for ethical, medical, religious, health or personal reasons, your diet should remain simple, flexible, varied and nourishing. 

Your personalized style of eating is constantly evolving. 

Keep it practical, enjoyable and sustainable. 

It’s not a fad, it doesn’t require meticulous calculations, there are no strict rules, and it should never cause guilt, stress or worry.

Feeling off track?

Whether it's traveling, life stressors or multiple events occurring in a short time period, it's easy to feel off track with your diet and workout routine. 

A common tendency for athletes is to see the next "normal" day of life as an opportunity to get back on track. 

With an intense desire to "be really good" until life feels normal again, there's nothing wrong with this, right? 

Well, it's a problem if your "normal" lifestyle habits are so extreme that you can not function well in life when you feel a loss of control over every situation relating to your diet and workout regime. 

For athletes who don't feel safe with their thoughts, choices or feelings when they can not control normal life situations, getting back on track may require an extremely disciplined and restrictive style of eating and going a bit longer and harder with training for the next 48-72 hours, all in an effort to regain control over what didn't go as planned.

This is not only risky for your health but it can cause a roller coaster of emotions too.

The important thing to remember is that we don't have to control every situation to feel and to be "on track".
You can't make up for what happened in the past and you can't control the future, so why not focus on the present?

Give yourself 4-5 days to slowly get yourself back to lifestyle habits that are healthy and productive to your goals.
No need to go to the extreme as being too fixated on "healthy" habits can actually be unhealthy.

As athletes, we already live a very extreme lifestyle and with so many daily decisions and responsibilities, it can be exhausting to feel the need to control everything.

You know that life is going to happen and you will need to travel to work, you will be invited to a party with a smorgasbord of food that you normally don't eat and you are going to miss workouts because life is stressful and busy. 

Rather than letting yourself feel insecure when life is out of your control, perhaps it is time to focus on how you can feel more calm, at ease or at peace with your choices when you find yourself deviating from your "normal" routine.

Remember that anytime you feel off, getting back on track should be focused on you functioning well in life rather than trying to fix what you couldn't control, because it wasn't exactly like you wanted it to be. 

Are you making a New Year diet change?

Fasting, detoxing, cleansing.....

It's no surprise that after the holiday season and the start of the New Year, weight loss is a top priority. However, weight loss involves a lifestyle change and for many people, there are many psychological barriers that prohibit the "right" changes from being made. 

Motivation in the New Year to eat better, exercise more or live a healthier lifestyle is not uncommon but is this going to be the year when it's no longer an attempt but rather a start to a new, maintainable healthy lifestyle?

Of course, you may have said it once before...

"THIS will be the year when I stick with my new habits!!"

But we all know that making a lifestyle change is challenging and when people can't follow a diet plan, they feel like they failed. When people succeed it a diet plan, they feel great success. 

But unfortunately, many people will go year after year, diet plan after diet plan, never realizing that these plans were not ideal for their lifestyle. So much money, time and energy invested in trying to be good with a plan that was never ideal for your lifestyle in the first place!

But don't worry- I want to help you out so failing or short-lived success is not an option this year.  

Diet fads make it easy. 

Eliminating food and following a restrictive plan that tells you what not to eat is one of the easiest and most effective ways to losing weight. 

But as we all know, diet plans don't work because they are designed for the masses and not for you and your life. 

And especially for athletes, you do NOT fit in with the normal population because you are doing extraordinary things with your body that the normal population does not have to consider when modifying the diet.

For athletes, your diet must support your metabolic needs so that you do not compromise your health as you attempt to improve your performance. 

If you really want to commit to a healthy change this New Year and follow through with your attempt at breaking old habits for a better lifestyle, you have to have a plan that prepares you for success.

It can be extremely tempting to follow the crowd and follow the same plan that thousands and thousands of other people will follow, but is it the right plan for your lifestyle?

If you are really serious that you want to change your diet in an effort to lose weight, change your body composition, improve your health or maximize performance, here are a few tips to employ in the first week of the New Year:

1) Create a positive food and body vocabulary and avoid negative language when it comes to food and your body. Stop calling yourself fat, ugly, disgusting or gross and instead, speak positively about your body and what  it has allowed you to do or what you want it to help you accomplish in life. When it comes to food, stop the bad, horrible, off-limit food list. See food for what it is as it nourishes your body, fuels your workouts and gives you pleasure when you eat.

2) Create order with your diet. The number one reason people fail with a diet plan is because they can't maintain it. There are so many reasons why diet plans don't work and it's time, once and for all, that you remind yourself that you need to establish an eating style that works for you. Do not try to change too much at once. Restriction and food elimination will not last long. Focus on only the following to start a new style of eating: Plan your meals and snacks ahead of time, reflect on your meals and snacks to decide if they are working for you (do you feel satisfied after you eat?) and consider how your emotions, busy life and workouts affect your food choices (or are impacted by your food choices).

3) Eat real food. Aside from a diet plan that endorses bars, shakes, pills and other marketed products with their diet plan, almost every diet has one thing in common - eat real food. Our society has a very big problem when it comes to how and what people eat and real food is often not to blame. Before you decide to do anything drastic with your diet, just think about how you have been eating for the past 6 months. That's it - just think about what was or wasn't working for you and then ask yourself if eliminating carbohydrates, restricting calories to 1000 a day, fasting, juicing or detoxing is really going to be the change that you need. Ask yourself, what are my most major struggles with my dietary habits that are not helping me with my weight, performance or health goals?

4) Eating should be a positive experience. So many people see eating as a miserable, stressful and overwhelming experience. In other countries and some in the US (although it is rare in our society where so many people have an unhealthy relationship with food), where people have a great relationship with food and the body, meal time is a positive, enjoyable and happy experience. Life stops for meal time and it often happens at a table and not in the car, behind a computer or on the go. Next time you do a search on the internet for "how to eat healthy", check out how people eat around the world, especially those who have increased longevity due to their food choices (because that is why we all want to eat healthy right, to live a long life, free from disease). 

5) It's a lifestyle change. Speaking of how other people in the world live their life, a healthy lifestyle is more than just eating "well." People who seek a high quality life embrace many components that  bring happiness and good health in life. Are you really going to be happy avoiding carbohydrates, eating 1000 calories a day, fasting every 2 days, not eating fruit or a dessert ever again or not being able to eat around other people or out of your home because your strict eating habits are well, too strict? A healthy lifestyle means managing stress, sleeping well, staying active, moving the body as much as possible (reducing sedentary time), making "me time", being around positive people, giving and receiving love, finding joy in a career choice, eating a diet that bring happiness (and not restriction), being out in nature (or outside), traveling and experiencing new things in life. If eating better is important to you, consider the other components that you can change that will make you feel like you are living the best life possible for your body. 

If you are struggling with your eating or body image, seek a healthy diet or body composition change or want to improve your eating habits without affecting your performance or want to excel as an athlete by fueling your body properly, send me an email - I would love to be part of your lifestyle journey.

 I do not offer diet plans because I treat every athlete that I work with as an individual. The style of diet consulting that I offer is not trendy, sexy or mass-marketed but it works because it takes YOUR lifestyle, your habits and your goals into consideration.